East Hartford, Conn. -- He stood there after the game, insisting that he’d enjoyed not so much as a smidge of vengeance even if the scoreboard had declared it was his right. And maybe, just maybe, Paul Pasqualoni was telling the truth on this brilliant Saturday afternoon that had shone so brightly on his gray-haired head.

"You’re going to put your own twist on this," he chided a visiting wretch from Syracuse. "You have a history of doing that. I was there for 18 years, you know. But I still love you. Don’t worry. I still love you."

So, he was a happy man. A proud man. But, he promised, he was not in the least a vindicated one.

"My feelings about Syracuse are the great relationships I had with the players and the coaches I worked with there," Pasqualoni declared. "And there was the leadership of my boss in those years, Jake Crouthamel. But everybody I know is really, essentially, out of there.

"So, for me, this was about these players and the effort on both sides of the ball. And that’s it. Just winning is special. People don’t appreciate, generally, how hard it is to win these games. Anytime you win, it’s great."

It’s been suggested that stubbornness does have its helpful features because you always know what you’re going be thinking tomorrow. And that works for Paul, now 62 but forever the same in appearance, temperament, philosophy and style.

Take Saturday, for example. Watching him, with stony face, work the sidelines at Rentschler Field where 38,769 had gathered . . . listening to him speak, in his signature tone that has launched legions of imitators, after the clock had drained . . . knowing that he was likely bound for an Italian dinner (and then a review of the game tape) -- all of it made those who know Pasqualoni think that the day had just spilled out of a time capsule.

Frank Ordonez / The Post-StandardUConn coach Paul Pasqualoni after a Huskies' touchdown in the first quarter.

This was 2011, sure, and his garb was all about Connecticut. But it just as well could have been 1991 (or exactly 20 years earlier), Paul’s first season as the SU head coach, and the color could have been orange. UConn rookie now . . . Syracuse rookie then. And not a whole lot had changed.

Except, of course, that so much had.

The guy who wouldn’t dismiss him from his Orange post, Crouthamel, was in the joint after having been invited by the Connecticut folks to drive over from his retirement home on Cape Cod. But so was the guy who would -- and did -- fire him in Syracuse, Daryl Gross, who could not have been pleased that so unremarkable a bunch as UConn had been able to turn it over five times and complete only eight passes and scratch out barely 300 yards of offense . . . and still knock off Doug Marrone’s slumping outfit.

So, yeah. The world isn't nearly the same for Paul Pasqualoni, back in college following six seasons in the NFL. This, even if he is.

"There’s a process we’re going through," offered Paul . . . and not unfamiliarly. "We’re in transition. We’re trying to get better every week. I said, coming in at halftime, ‘We’re lucky to be in this thing. We’re lucky it’s 7-7.’ We squandered opportunities. We turned it over. On the flip side of that pancake, we could have had 14 or 21 points, too."

The sad fact of the matter is that the Orange, which couldn't beat a club that couldn't beat Western Michigan, suffered through its very own Bill Buckner moment on Saturday. It allowed this easy grounder of a messy football contest -- so filled with gaffes that a pressbox wag was inspired to ask midway through it, "When does the varsity game begin?" -- to roll between its legs.

A lot of games

In the days leading up to Saturday’s affair at Rentschler Field, Paul Pasqualoni had been asked about his time at SU and he demurred, saying that he’d been involved in a lot of games since leaving the Orange at the end of the 2004 campaign.

In fact, that number – excluding NFL preseason contests – totaled 107: 66 with the Dallas Cowboys, 33 with the Miami Dolphins and eight with the UConn Huskies.

For what it’s worth, that number matched exactly the number of wins Pasqualoni directed during his 14-year tenure as the Syracuse head coach. His record at SU? It was 107-59-1. So, it was a bad day, a very bad day, for the SU squad, which is 5-4 and looking like it may not win again this fall.

It was, though, a landmark moment for Connecticut. For, especially, Paul Pasqualoni, who once loved Syracuse but was delighted on Saturday to have defeated it in his first opportunity to do so. Just because he would not admit as much didn’t make it any less so.

"This is probably the 100th time this week that I’ve addressed it," Paul said, finally, of the whole revenge thing. "Jerry Martin (strength and conditioning coach) played at Syracuse. George DeLeone (offensive coordinator) coached there. I coached there. And that’s it. This was not about us. It was about the players on the teams from Connecticut and Syracuse in a Big East Conference game in November."

Paul being Paul, he likely (and fully) embraced the spirit of those words. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t smile on his drive home. That doesn’t mean he didn’t smile broadly while drumming his fingers on the wheel.

No real twist there.

Bud Poliquin’s columns, "To The Point" observations and freshly-written on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on Syracuse.com. His work also appears regularly on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, Poliquin can be heard weekday mornings between 10 a.m.-12 noon on the sports-talk radio show, "Bud & The Manchild," on The Score 1260-AM.